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House Music Saved My Life...Maybe | News | Pulse Radio
Alex just posted this a while back......
During the first few days of September, 2001 a battle raged in the Fish household. I had just graduated college that May and was preparing to move to Los Angeles to work in film in a last ditch effort to convince myself, my family and my friends that I didn’t actually want to be a DJ or work in nightlife. But as much as I wanted to sell the idea that the investment in my prep school and private college was going to organically translate into a career in cinema, I couldn’t ditch my Technics 1200’s, Ortofon Needles, Pioneer DJM 600 Mixer, vinyl collection (of, gasp, progressive house) and a somewhat reckless and unnecessarily powered Yamaha sound system.
For my money, the only choice was to get a trailer hitch surgically mounted onto the frame of my 1997 Saturn SL2 and rent the largest U-haul trailer allowable by law and tow it nearly 3,000 miles across the country from Boston to Los Angeles. My mother saw things differently and felt vehemently that my plan would result in either a massive accident or, at the very least, burn out the car’s engine or brakes. For the record, the U-haul guy thought I was batshit insane too. We went back and forth about it, to the extent that she finally offered to pay for my flight to Los Angeles and the costs of shipping the car (but not my records or gear) across the country. I needed to be out in LA at the latest by Thursday, September 13th in order to sign the lease on a new place and there were two nonstop flights leaving Boston September 10th and September 11th. She laid it out in the simplest terms she could, it was foolish and shortsighted to risk my car and welfare on a plan to drive cross country, she’d buy me a ticket for Monday or Tuesday AM on American or United, get the car shipped so it was waiting for me at LAX and we could forget about it. There might have even been a nominal cash incentive if I pursued this option but I wouldn’t be swayed. My collection of Bedrock records that more or less all sound the same to me these days was too important to not bring with me to The City of Angels. I set out on my drive to LA on Sunday, September 9th, 2001 with a friend who had dreadlocks and was of Libyan/Japanese descent. On the morning of Tuesday, September 11th we were driving through Kansas when I first got a call from an ex-girlfriend that “we were under attack.” We turned on NPR and pulled into the first place we could to try to understand what was going on, it was a Pizza Hut and there was a birthday party in full swing. Nobody seemed to know what was happening in New York, and while we waited for a slice of pizza I can’t remember eating my mother called. “Get back in the car. You and Amar keep a low profile and stay safe.” We got back in the car and drove through the Kansas and Nebraska flats while listening awestruck, scared and in disbelief as National Public Radio broadcast the audio from major televisions stations like NBC. We heard the towers fall, and tried to rationalize how everything would somehow remain the same, as though the world itself wasn’t changing forever. We got to Vegas and what had been the highlight of the drive became the eeriest stop I’ve ever made on a roadtrip. Massive LED screens up and down the strip flew American flags and messages of solidarity scrolled across any and all signage that existed. When we finally made it to Los Angeles and I had a chance to turn on a TV, it was the first time I started to recognize how close I’d come to being on one of those flights. I’d heard “American,” “United,” “Boston to Los Angeles” and the flight numbers “11” and “175” hundreds of times on the radio, but only by seeing them scroll across the bottom of the screen along with the names of the people who’d been on the flights did the gravity of it all start to coalesce inside of me. Two of the four flights I was potentially going to take to Los Angeles from Boston now sat at the bottom of a heap of rubble in lower Manhattan. As anyone who knows me can attest, it would border on blasphemy to suggest that I represent a steady flow of prudent decisions, where every option is weighed against another, and only the most logical course is selected. But I do like to think that I stick to my guns and follow my heart whenever possible and it just might have saved my life eleven years ago.
Alex just posted this a while back......
During the first few days of September, 2001 a battle raged in the Fish household. I had just graduated college that May and was preparing to move to Los Angeles to work in film in a last ditch effort to convince myself, my family and my friends that I didn’t actually want to be a DJ or work in nightlife. But as much as I wanted to sell the idea that the investment in my prep school and private college was going to organically translate into a career in cinema, I couldn’t ditch my Technics 1200’s, Ortofon Needles, Pioneer DJM 600 Mixer, vinyl collection (of, gasp, progressive house) and a somewhat reckless and unnecessarily powered Yamaha sound system.
For my money, the only choice was to get a trailer hitch surgically mounted onto the frame of my 1997 Saturn SL2 and rent the largest U-haul trailer allowable by law and tow it nearly 3,000 miles across the country from Boston to Los Angeles. My mother saw things differently and felt vehemently that my plan would result in either a massive accident or, at the very least, burn out the car’s engine or brakes. For the record, the U-haul guy thought I was batshit insane too. We went back and forth about it, to the extent that she finally offered to pay for my flight to Los Angeles and the costs of shipping the car (but not my records or gear) across the country. I needed to be out in LA at the latest by Thursday, September 13th in order to sign the lease on a new place and there were two nonstop flights leaving Boston September 10th and September 11th. She laid it out in the simplest terms she could, it was foolish and shortsighted to risk my car and welfare on a plan to drive cross country, she’d buy me a ticket for Monday or Tuesday AM on American or United, get the car shipped so it was waiting for me at LAX and we could forget about it. There might have even been a nominal cash incentive if I pursued this option but I wouldn’t be swayed. My collection of Bedrock records that more or less all sound the same to me these days was too important to not bring with me to The City of Angels. I set out on my drive to LA on Sunday, September 9th, 2001 with a friend who had dreadlocks and was of Libyan/Japanese descent. On the morning of Tuesday, September 11th we were driving through Kansas when I first got a call from an ex-girlfriend that “we were under attack.” We turned on NPR and pulled into the first place we could to try to understand what was going on, it was a Pizza Hut and there was a birthday party in full swing. Nobody seemed to know what was happening in New York, and while we waited for a slice of pizza I can’t remember eating my mother called. “Get back in the car. You and Amar keep a low profile and stay safe.” We got back in the car and drove through the Kansas and Nebraska flats while listening awestruck, scared and in disbelief as National Public Radio broadcast the audio from major televisions stations like NBC. We heard the towers fall, and tried to rationalize how everything would somehow remain the same, as though the world itself wasn’t changing forever. We got to Vegas and what had been the highlight of the drive became the eeriest stop I’ve ever made on a roadtrip. Massive LED screens up and down the strip flew American flags and messages of solidarity scrolled across any and all signage that existed. When we finally made it to Los Angeles and I had a chance to turn on a TV, it was the first time I started to recognize how close I’d come to being on one of those flights. I’d heard “American,” “United,” “Boston to Los Angeles” and the flight numbers “11” and “175” hundreds of times on the radio, but only by seeing them scroll across the bottom of the screen along with the names of the people who’d been on the flights did the gravity of it all start to coalesce inside of me. Two of the four flights I was potentially going to take to Los Angeles from Boston now sat at the bottom of a heap of rubble in lower Manhattan. As anyone who knows me can attest, it would border on blasphemy to suggest that I represent a steady flow of prudent decisions, where every option is weighed against another, and only the most logical course is selected. But I do like to think that I stick to my guns and follow my heart whenever possible and it just might have saved my life eleven years ago.
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